1. Field of the Invention
Illustrative embodiments of the present invention relate to a status reporting apparatus, an image processing system, a control program, and a storage medium, and more specifically, to management of status information of an image processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Background
Recently, as information digitization has been increasingly promoted, image processing apparatuses such as printers, facsimiles, and scanners have come to be more widely used to output digitized information. Such image processing apparatuses include multi-functional apparatuses having several of image capturing, image forming, communication, and other capabilities.
Such image processing apparatuses may be connected to a network such as a LAN (local area network) and used, for example, as a network printer, which forms an image in accordance with a print job received from a client terminal such as a PC (personal computer) connected to the network.
One known method of managing such an image processing apparatus proposes monitoring the status of the image processing apparatus using a management server connected to the network. In the method, the management server monitors the status of the image processing apparatus at a certain time interval, detects events such as sheet jam, out of sheet, and print completion in the image processing apparatus, and reports the events to a predetermined destination.
To report the status of the image processing apparatus to an external device, one known method proposes reporting a change in status of the image processing apparatus to a predetermined destination. The image processing apparatus using the method reports the status change in processing executed in the image processing apparatus to the predetermined destination.
However, in the known methods of managing the image processing apparatus, the above-mentioned management server manages the image processing apparatus in accordance with predetermined system administrator information. Such a configuration prevents the administrator information from being dynamically changed to manage only desired information and only as needed. Further, those who want information on the status of the image processing apparatus are not limited only to the system administrator authorized to operate the management server. For example, a user requesting a job may want to receive information on the progress of the job, the occurrence of any error, and/or other events of the job. In such a case, the user may also need such job-related information in real time.
As described above, in the management of the image processing apparatus connected to the network, it may be insufficient to establish a single rule (management method) for every event. Instead, what is needed is a plurality of rules for each event.